Carolyn Cross survived an airplane crash in Richmond in 2011. She is now trying to help civilian rescuers of similar traumatic events deal with PTSD, and is distributing a pamphlet in hopes of reaching those people who may be in need of professional help after witnessing horrific events.Jason Payne
/ PROVINCE

Simon Pearce and Carolyn Cross hold hands in the hospital.

Carolyn Cross was a passenger on the small plane that crashed on Russ Baker Way by the Vancouver International Airport in Richmond on Oct. 27, 2011.

Carolyn Cross was a passenger on the small plane that crashed on Russ Baker Way by the Vancouver International Airport in Richmond on Oct. 27, 2011.Ric Ernst
/ PNG

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It was a perfect dream of a day to fly; one of those rare October days when the sun is so brilliant it makes the Lower Mainland forget that the rains are coming.

Fifty-one-year-old mother of three Carolyn Cross, the CEO of her own company — Ondine Biomedical — was settled into her seat at the rear of the plane on Flight 204. The aircraft, a Beechcraft King Air 100 owned by Northern Thunderbird Air, was headed from Vancouver to Kelowna on the afternoon of Oct. 27, 2011 with seven business passengers on-board.

Cross chatted with the flight crew before takeoff and remembers insisting that the pilot, 44-year-old Luc Fortin, take one of her chocolate chip cookies as a pre-flight snack.

With a view of the cockpit from her seat, Cross remembers soaring into that beautiful late afternoon light. They were about 10 minutes into the flight when Fortin announced they were turning back to land in Vancouver because of an oil leak. Then Cross saw something that did not at first compute: she saw the pilot’s hands were shaking.

“I understood we were in serious trouble and had a few minutes to put my thoughts in order. I picked up my phone to send parting messages to my husband and children,” Cross says.

As Cross texted her family from the skies, 34-year-old Simon Pearce, a Transport Canada pilot, was on his way home with wife Kim from his base at the airport. They were stopped at a traffic light on No. 2 Road in Richmond when they saw a plane clearly in trouble.

“We didn’t see it come down, but we heard it about 50 yards north of us. I pulled to the side of the road, shouted at Kim to call 911 and was out of the car sprinting across the field,” Pearce says.

“I understood that I was alive and had survived the crash but now the plane was on fire immediately outside my window. I could not feel my legs so did not know how I could escape. The thought of burning to death terrified me more than the fear of dying in a crash. I somehow found the strength to pull myself to the door of the plane.”

Cross had a broken pelvis, concussion, fractured ribs and torn ligaments. With a superhuman effort, she pulled herself to the now open door, but she had nothing left.

Pearce and other civilians were by now gathering at the door of the burning plane.

“I remember seeing the door pop open and the first person came out on his own and then helped the second passenger out. ... I remember noticing the flames now pooling under the left wing,” says Pearce. “Then I saw a woman lying on the stair door with her head out and her body still inside the plane. She said ‘Help me, I can’t move my legs.’ I grabbed her arms and pulled her backwards away from the fire. She looked at me and said ‘I thought I was going to die, I texted my children goodbye.’ ”

Pearce pulled Cross 10 metres away from the plane and gently put her down. She urged him to go back as others were still trapped. Pearce handed her off to an Asian man on a bicycle who tenderly placed his helmet under Cross’s head and stayed with her.

For the next 10 minutes or so, a brigade of civilian “angels” got three more passengers off the burning plane before emergency crews arrived. Incredibly all seven passengers survived the crash of Flight 204. But it took more than 20 minutes for firefighters to extract the crew, who were by then severely burned. Fortin died of his injuries later that day. The co-pilot, 26-year-old Matt Robic, died a few days later.

The rescuers were complete strangers to the passengers, and to one another. They simply happened to be passing by and with remarkable efficiency, acted as a civilian rescue team seemingly without regard for their own safety.

Cross remembers lying on the side of the road drifting in and out of consciousness, looking through the jet-fuel haze at rescuers going deep into the belly of the burning plane.

“People were shouting, ‘It’s going to blow, it’s full of gas,’ but they went in and kept going in. We are alive because of them. I lay there watching that wall of flame and smoke and thought ‘I need the world to understand this miracle’ that I was now a part of.”

Eighteen months later, Carolyn Cross still marvels at the series of “miracles” that resulted in the survival of all seven passengers that day. She and Simon Pearce have become fast friends and passionate crusaders for recognition and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in civilian first responders.

With the assistance of mental health professionals at Vancouver General Hospital and the Vancouver Fire Department, they’ve produced a pamphlet — Heroes Need Help Too — for people struggling with the traumatic impact of extraordinary circumstances.

But before the rescuers and the rescued could do any of that, they had to find each other. And that proved unaccountably difficult. It was three months after the crash that a few had the critical incident debriefing and four months before the full group of passengers and key rescuers were able to meet, Cross says.

“Our intense experience had bound us together and I knew that emotional healing was only possible as a group. It remains to this day one of my greatest frustrations that ‘privacy rules’ and poor professional advice kept us apart until four months after the accident,” Cross says.

Today — sitting in the boardroom of her company’s downtown corporate offices — Cross has physically healed from many of her injuries. But the emotional trauma is still imprinted on her remarkably open face.

Cross wipes away tears as she recalls how she tried to numb and block the increasingly serious symptoms she faced in the months after the crash.

“My world was so desperate to have me back. I’ve always been the strong one. I wasn’t allowed to be uncertain. I had concussion syndrome and dizzy spells. I couldn’t sleep, and when I did would dream about driving a car that was crashing in a tunnel. I was so exhausted. How do you tell everyone who depends on you that you are not coping? Time passes, everybody else moves on. Who wants a CEO with mental health problems?”

For Pearce the realization that he was in psychological trouble happened right away. To this day, his greatest sorrow is that rescuers could not get to the flight crew as the cockpit burned.

“What happened to the flight crew is my worst nightmare,” says Pearce. “Nobody but the fire department could have gotten to them. There was nothing we could do. Afterwards I sat in the car with my wife and talked about what we remembered and experienced. Then I called my boss and said ‘we need help.’ ”For Pearce, it was the simple prospect of doing his job that proved the most daunting. He could not imagine flying a plane again. Fortunately for Pearce, Transportation Safety Board investigator Bill Yearwood was able to help in arranging a meeting for Pearce and Cross at Vancouver General Hospital a week after the crash.

Pearce recalls that he was a “nervous and emotional wreck” before meeting the woman he had saved.

“We just held one another and cried for the first five minutes,” Cross says. “Simon explained he was having a hard time getting back into a plane. I told him that his role now was to champion safety and understanding of the impact of a rescue like this on civilians. I needed to see him. He needed to see me. There are pieces that only we could share with one another. It was so healing. By the end of our first meeting I knew in some way that I was now rescuing the rescuer.”

Who does rescue the rescuers? That’s become a pressing question for many of the people involved in this crash. The impact of PTSD on first responders is well known and documented. Police and fire services have well established programs for critical incident debriefing of members. But there are no formal mechanisms for civilians who are suffering.

Cross and Pearce found allies in the Vancouver Fire Department. With the assistance of the city, the department offered its Critical Incident Stress Management team to lead a debriefing.

CISM team leader Bryan Gillan and VFD colleagues Dan Cutler and Geoff Hiebert provided support to the group when it finally met in late January 2012.

“They definitely needed to talk as a group, as this is not something that regular human beings face every day” says Gillan. “We went around the circle and talked about each person’s role and as we did people were saying ‘ahhh so that’s what happened.’ They were finally able to put the pieces together.”

Since then, the survivors of Flight 204 have met over dinner and at a number of award ceremonies honouring the bravery of the citizen responders.

“The medals on the wall are nice, but what we really need is a system to make sure that people who risk their lives to save others are looked after,” says Pearce.

“ ... There has to be some kind of support system so when people like me need the help it is there.”

There is still no real answer to the question of who is ultimately responsible for mental health services for civilians with PTSD. Cross says it’s a tough issue for the corporate world because of stigma, fears about productivity and the level of responsibility an employer has to an employee with mental health issues.

But those who work in the field say that Cross and her rescuer have already made an invaluable contribution by sharing their stories.

“The statistics show one in five people will experience a form of mental illness in their lifetime ...,” says Barbara Grantham of the VGH&UBC Hospital Foundation. “Like most illnesses, it can strike unpredictably and does not discriminate. We deeply appreciate Carolyn Cross sharing her personal story and raising awareness.”

This work has given both Cross and Pearce a path to healing. But it’s too simple to say that either can now put it behind them.

“It was the worst thing I have seen by far,” says Pearce, still struggling today to hold back the tears. “I get body flashbacks where I hear something and shudder, trying to process it. My brain is only 90 per cent of what it was, I know it has affected my performance at work.”

To this day Cross cannot get into a small plane, but Simon Pearce is flying again. It helps that he stays in close touch with a woman he calls “a teacher and a beacon” in his life.

“I’m hard wired for public service,” says Cross.

“I went through this ordeal for a purpose. ... It’s now my role to perhaps bring a new honesty and intimacy to mental health issues.

“If I can give credibility to early intervention and prevention, then I may really be able to walk away from this crash.”

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